Tag Archives: U.S. Department of Transportation

Should airlines be allowed to advertised fares that do not include taxes and fees? Screengrab: Kayak.

We may have some bad news for those of you who like straight-forward airfares.

According to the Associated Press, a bill favored by the airline industry that would allow carriers to revert to their old practice of advertising fares without taxes is moving through Congress at “mach speed.”

As you know, a lot of bills tend to just languish in Congress. And when I wrote about the “Transparent Airfares Act of 2014 — last month for our newspapers, I figured this bill would be the same. Consumers, who are also voters, don’t like it. I figured the proposed legislation would just die, perhaps to be reintroduced in a future Congress.

But apparently Washington watchers think otherwise. The AP seems to be suggest that the bill could become law. That would mean an airline could once again advertise a $99 fare, without saying that the actual ticket would end up costing about $35 more, due to all those taxes and government fees.

The AP says the airlines have stepped up their lobbying game in recent years.

“Thirty airlines spent nearly $30 million on lobbying and employed 213 lobbyists last year, according to the political money-tracking website OpenSecrets.org,” reporter Joan Lowy wrote.

The story also notes that bill sponsor Bill Shuster, R-Pa., the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman, …”has received $64,900 in airline contributions so far in this election season, making him the top congressional recipient of airline contributions.” On top of that, he has taken $22,500 from air transport unions, according to the story.

What do you think? Will this bill become law? Might it languish in the Senate? Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., has already announce that he wants to try to block it.

Here’s another example of why you probably shouldn’t complain about high airfares. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics released its 2013 first quarter airfare data on Wednesday, and it shows fares are considerably lower than they were 15 years ago.

I suppose you could be upset that fares have risen slightly since 2007. But it should have been expected that fares would climb slightly once the economy improved.

Below is the data:

Table 1. 1st Quarter Average Fare 1995-2013, Adjusted for Inflation

Average Fare in 2013 dollars ($)

Year-to-Year Percent Change in Average Fare (1Q to 1Q) (%)

Cumulative Percent Change in Average Fare (1Q 1995 to 1Q of each year) (%)

If you’re a regular flier, you know that airlines often blame high fuel prices when they raise fares. But the U.S. Department of Transportation came out with new data this week, and fuel prices are actually trending down.

This should be good news for passengers. But would you suppose we’ll see fare prices going down?

If May’s data is any indication, you might want to avoid certain airline flight.

The U.S. Department of Transportation published a list this week of 170 flights that arrived 30 or more minutes late at least half the time in May.

The worst offender? A Go! flight operated by Mesa Airlines from Honolulu to Kona. It was at least 30 minutes late 80 percent of the time in May. The average delay was 69 minutes.

I was surprised to find some Southern California flights on the list, as our airport operations here are generally efficient. Here are the flights — all involved LAX — that made DOT list. (For this grouping, only 30 minute and greater delays are considered)

The U.S. Department of Transportation has published its monthly list of the most on-time airlines. As usual — thanks to that great island weather — Hawaiian Airlines is No. 1.

It’s important to note that an “on-time arrival” actually means that a plane parked at the gate within 14 minutes of its schedule arrival time. It’s also important to understand an airline sets its own schedule, and some carriers are more aggressive with scheduling flight times than others. If it wants, an airline could “pad” it’s schedule to ensure it rises on this list.

Most airline executives tell me that on-time performance is the single-biggest driver of customer satisfaction.